Cypriot house parties, dentists and partying in Barcelona

Did you know that sometimes lions eat humans because they have toothaches? Yep, toothaches make it impossible for them to hunt game.....and humans are soft.. Why did I tell  you this story? No, I did not get cannibalistic tendencies when my tooth started killing me in Barcelona......but I can understand how a toothache can make you do atypical things...It drives you mad. 

On self-medication I was able to do a few things - until things really got bad. We spent an idyllic Sunday morning/afternoon at the beach. In the evening we went to my friend's brother's place - he is Cypriot. We had a fun house party that included lots of dancing up until the neighbours came to complain about the noise. 5am we got home - all partied out. 

A few hours later I woke up to the worst tooth pain. I frantically went searching the city for a dentist. The first dentist I went to, did not speak a word of English (not their fault - I really should have learnt Spanish, but I didn't know I would be looking for a dentist in Barcelona.) The second dentist did not speak any English, but could understand enough for me to relay the fact that I was on death's doors and would die if she didn't do anything about my tooth. She did some scans and told me to come back at 7pm when she would be able to tell me more. In retrospect the tests were hilarious. I was given all instructions in Spanish and sign language. "Open your mouth." "Turn your head right." "Rest your jaw here." They were quite patient with me. In my distressed state I searched for a cybercafe to print my medical claim forms. 

At 7pm I was back at the dentist's. They had bad news - my tooth was really bad and I would need at least 3 days in Barcelona for them to do the necessary work. Only problem was we were scheduled to leave Barcelona in the morning.....I decided I would have to survive on my own stock of anesthetic until I got back to Nairobi. 

I got back to the hostel, packed my bags and went to party the last night in Barcelona away. Alcohol is a great pain killer. We started off the night in Los Libertias in Universitat for 1 Euro chubidas (shots.) We had quite a few shots. After that we went to Apollo Club for "Nasty Mondays".....Yeah, that name.....they probably meant it to be "crazy mondays" or something of the sort. The club was packed. Only 2 of us were partying. I met some really great guy, we danced till morning (at which point is was time for us to catch our train back to Paris.) I recall my guy walking me back to my hostel (which wasn't far from the club,) and carrying my ginomous backpack to the train station - from which I took the subway to get to the main train station. The guy my friend was with - also tried to carry her backpack, but he was quite annoying. He had been drinking beer on the streets as we walked to our hostels to get our suitcases, yelling and propositioning prostitutes. My friend yanked her backpack away from him and wouldn't let him carry it. Some part of me felt that I should practice solidarity and also not let his friend carry my backpack......but to be honest - it was so great to not have that monster on my back....and really.....when else would I find a guy offering to carry my giant backpack. 

The two of us (The BARacuda) and myself finally got to the train station. We found the rest of our crew there. We got into the train and passed out immediately. We arrived in Paris at 5pm. 

About that time in Barcelona when we went to an all-you-can-drink Australian pub

There are few things as dangerous as an open bar. Commonsense out, greed in. That is exactly what happened to us in Stoke pub in Barcelona. The hostel gave us a card with all the must-do things in Barcelona and one was to go to an Australian pub with 10 Euros all you can drink beer or sangria for what they called "power hour." As much sangria and beer as you want for an hour. We did the math and figured out this would be a nice cheap plan - go drink at Stoke then not need to buy any drinks for the rest of the night.  

We got to Stoke at a respectable hour - around 5pm. We did the math. If a glass of sangria or beer costs 3.30 Euros, then to break even we need to have at least 3 glasses to break even. But we are Kenyans. Do you think we win all those olympic medals by doing the bare minimum? Of course not! We were going to do even better than break even - we were going for gold. We had to pick whether to go with Beer or Sangria. It was decided by our small committee that sangria was more bang for our buck - how much beer can one realistically drink in an hour - before getting bloated.....How that hour began and how it ended are like night and day. We got in as proper cultured ladies and pretty soon we were yelling at the top of our voices.  

They started by bringing us 2 pitchers of sangria. There were 6 of us. When we finished our pitchers, there was a bell we were to ring for them to refill. Towards the end of that power hour, we had some frantic bell ringing courtesy of The BARacuda. We also had some erratic chugging, some crazy pouring - that resulted in more sangria on the table than in the glasses. There was one casualty of the power hour - whose partying came to an abrupt end after the hour. She found herself home by 7pm. 

The rest though - we left Stoke and moved to the next place. A bar that had live music, wine and shots for a flat fee of 5 Euros. I'm still not quite sure how we managed to have more drinks. Later in the night, we went to a night club called Jamboree where we danced and danced and danced. We got home at 6am. 

Barcelona was clearly our type of city.

Oh....you're wondering. Did we break even at Stoke? Hell, we bankrupt the place:-)

Leaving Paris for Barcelona

It was long journey to the train station. I was unsettled. I had a horrible toothache, had slept 2 hours, was really getting tired of Paris and we had no train tickets to leave - not for lack of trying. We had gone to the train station almost daily only to be told we couldn't get tickets. We got to the train station and I tried again to book tickets. I had the rest wait by a train that we would hopefully get on. I had around an hour or so before that train was to leave - plenty of time, right? Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. There were long queues, half of the booths had no one working in them, when I finally got to the counter we had communication issues and a rude teller to boot. Her computer was slow and kept on freezing. Her printer jammed when she was to print my ticket. There were 5 of us, but she could only find 2 seats to reserve. I took them! I heard them announcing my train's departure. I ran like a crazy person. I jumped into the train just as the doors were closing. I knew my friends must have done the logical thing and entered the train too. I finally found them. It was a long journey - we changed trains 3 times because of our ticket-less situation. To make matters worse, we had each parted with 35 Euros to secure the few tickets we were able to. On most other routes, we had been able to use our Eurail passes without having to pay anything additional. This was not the case for trains leaving or getting into Paris. 

We finally got to Barcelona in the evening. We were extremely happy to no longer be in Paris! We walked to the beach and went to a bar near our hostel in the evening. It was a lovely hostel. Be Dream hostel at Pep Ventura train station. In a complete contrast to Paris, everyone we met was kind, helpful and friendly. Things were looking up again.